Current “AI” from my perspective is less like a technological breakthrough—“the genie is out of the bottle”—and more a research fusion reactor: no matter how much energy and money you throw at the thing, nothing changes the fact that it costs more energy than it produces
Just once I’d like to see journalists and politicians show at least a grain of scepticism about the claims being made by “AI” vendors. Just once. Just because anthropic styles their reports to look like scientific or academic papers doesn’t make them sound or credible.
Only just now realising that the wish fulfilment of having a dedicated slave or polite servant might play a bigger role in the popularity of chatbots than I expected
The "AI Compass" quiz, though broadly accurate in terms of my own results ("Luddite (affectionate)") is inherently a piece of pro-"AI" propaganda because it is one long exercise in obfuscating the differences between Machine Learning, LLMs, diffusion models, and other forms of statistical computing
One of the annoying consequences of LLMs is that many people now seem eager to dismiss any and all writing that people enjoy as “obviously LLM-generated”, just because it uses em-dashes or writing structures with decades if not centuries of history in English.
Finding productive uses for LLMs while at the same time doing nothing to mitigate the numerous harms makes things WORSE not better. Responding to “AI” critique by saying that they have their uses and with work we can make them genuinely productive is not a rational response. It’s accelerationism
This is your regular reminder that even if you “dispassionately” assess LLM tools purely in economic terms, they are a complete and utter failure. Massive costs and capital expenses (chips, training, datacentres) that deprecate rapidly, all for a negligible boost in economic productivity
The problem with positioning yourself as a sensible and reasonable moderate user of LLM software development tools is it means you’ll be the first up against the metaphorical wall if either the anti- or pro- sides truly gain the upper hand.
We’re at the stage of the bubble where the elderly and retired start to talk about the amazing revolution that is “AI” and start buying “AI training courses for the elderly” because they think they’re missing out on a tech purpose-designed to make office and creative industry workers unemployed
Sometimes I look at the people on both sides of the "AI" debate hawking sponsorships, getting major book deals, and doing the youtube roadshow and wonder if I'd have had an easier time financially if I had gone down that road Probably not. It'd have driven me bonkers 🤷♂️
